Glacier- Day 12 - Back Over The Continental Divide

After three days, it was time to leave beautiful Bowman Lake. We said goodbye by taking our morning coffee at the lakeshore, watching the mist rise over the lake with the mountains reflected in the water. Slowly, we packed up Speedy and rumbled back down the narrow, twisty and pot-holed dirt road to the ranger station at Polebridge for one last short hike.

We took the short 1.5-mile Covey Meadow Loop trail that leads through a thicket of young pines to a large open meadow. The grasses were tall and had already turned brown giving us a view of a golden field with the mountains in the distance. That last viewing complete, we went back to the Polebridge Mercantile for a carbohydrate fix. The place was jumping and the bakery was in full swing. We picked up a couple of savory breads for lunch, an apple-cinnamon ricotta roll for a second breakfast and a baker's dozen mixture of their cookies—one of each kind, plus an extra huckleberry macaroon.

We headed back down along the North Fork of the Flathead River, then out of the park at West Glacier, stopping at the historic West Glacier railroad station (previously Belton station). Most of the train traffic is BNSF freight trains passing through, but Amtrak still stops there twice a day with the Empire Builder, I believe. The station building is owned and maintained by the local historical association and is primarily a gift shop with the original interior and a small collection of railroad artifacts.

We then took US 2 east, back over the Continental Divide at Marias Pass, bypassing Goat Lick Overlook, where, it turns out we should have stopped—more on that later. At East Glacier village, we turned up Montana Rt 49 (vehicles over 21' prohibited) to the Two Medicine entrance back into the park. We arrived at the Two Medicine campground around 2:30 PM, made a quick circuit of the campground loops, found very few sites, picked one, crashed our way into it (more on that next) and by the time Ellen walked back to the entrance to deposit the payment envelope, the Campground Full sign was up. We cut that a bit close.

We may have taken other things a bit too close as well. As we were backing into the site, I didn't see a stump along the left side of the site and backed right into it. The bikes took the brunt of the damage. Mine was on the outside and hit the stump directly, bending my fork brace, squashing a fork tube, warping the front wheel and breaking a spoke. Ellen's looked okay at first, but my bike must a have pushed it against the rack upright, as it has a deep dent in the down-tube and a warped rear wheel. Suffice it to say, I was not a happy camper. Ellen wisely took a walk while I seethed over my stupidity.

After setting up Speedy, I took the bikes off to assess the damage. I tried to true Ellen's wheel but was not very successful. At least it didn't rub against the frame any more. Nothing can be done with the dent (except make-up an exciting story about its origin). I straightened the fork brace ... mostly, and got the forks realigned ... mostly, but without a replacement spoke, the wheel could not be trued. We are going to stop in Bozeman on the way to Yellowstone. Being the home of Montana State University, I expect we can find a reasonable bike shop.

After cooling down and having a fabulous dinner of tortellini with sage pesto (from our garden), we went off to the evening ranger talk which redeemed the day. The talk was on mountain goats. The ranger started off by saying that it would be a short wait while the goat that was invited showed up. He then played the classic tune (I'm sure you can hum it) and did a strip-tease down to a goat costume.

The talk was a very humorous presentation of the life of mountain goats from a male goat's perspective from birth to adulthood. There were enough puns to keep the kids laughing, but there were a few bits that were aimed at the adults in the audience and lots of slurs about big-horned sheep which get more attention because of their dramatic looks.

One of the questions was about Goat Lick, the site we passed by on the way here. Goats, like humans, crave salt and it is a natural mineral salt lick that attracts the local mountain goats, maybe 40-50 a day sometimes. One day recently, an enterprising mountain lion took up a spot overlooking a narrow pass that the goats go though. He was seen by a photographer taking down three goats, just for their livers, before moving on.

It was one of the better ranger talks we've attended. It made our day.

Photos